


Occupational Hazards

by Kablob, mylordshesacactus



Series: Happy Huntress Cinematic Universe [4]
Category: RWBY
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Gen, Hijinks, Robin Hood The OSHA Inspector, They Don't Even Have Dental
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23671126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kablob/pseuds/Kablob, https://archiveofourown.org/users/mylordshesacactus/pseuds/mylordshesacactus
Summary: "Never have we had so worshipful a guest before!" quoth Robin, "and, as the day waxeth late, I will send one of my own to guide thee out of the forest depths.""Nay, Heaven forbid!" cried the Sheriff hastily. "I can find mine own way, good man, without aid.""Then I will put thee on the right track mine own self," quoth Robin, and, taking the Sheriff's horse by the bridle rein, he led him into the main forest path.Or: Robyn and Fiona go on a mission with an old friend.
Relationships: Robyn Hill/Fiona Thyme
Series: Happy Huntress Cinematic Universe [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1646263
Comments: 38
Kudos: 129





	Occupational Hazards

Robyn was really supposed to be focusing right now.

She wasn’t a fan of the new Mission Board app. Oh, it had its benefits, in theory. For most Huntsmen it was probably perfect; real-time updates ensured that anyone in range had the ability to respond to urgent missions instantly, even if they’d already checked the board that day or didn’t have a way to get to a central posting location. 

Remote confirmation at the push of a button was useful too—no more administrative clusterfucks about picking up a friend or two en route who didn’t have time to go back and officially sign on for the mission only to find that a completely different team had already committed to the spot in the interim and now you had seven people on hand to handle a single rogue Ursa and nobody patrolling the crater edge.

What she did not appreciate in the slightest was that real-time updates required a full Scroll connection, which included location tracking.

Not, of course, that Robyn or any of her girls would _ever_ do something like _break the law._ But the only requirement to get access to the app was to present your license at a central posting board—and there were plenty of Huntsmen and Huntresses in the world, many of them in the Atlas military, that she absolutely did not want to have any information about where she spent her time. 

So she had an ironclad policy about no one but _no one_ unlocking the app within five hundred meters of home base. She’d let it update on the way back from patrol, and locked it again about ten minutes out; her practice was to scroll through as soon as she got in the door, mark missions she was interested in while in offline mode, then take another ten-minute hike in a random direction to sync it back with the board. It was just that sometimes she was sore, and getting into the heat felt really nice, and their cramped little townhouse smelled intoxicatingly like slowly-roasting buttery potatoes…

A sharp rap on her forehead made Robyn groan and crack an eye open. Joanna, lifting her book in order to make eye contact with Robyn’s head resting in her lap, raised a stern eyebrow before grinning and resting the novel back against her beloved team leader’s head.

“Tyrant,” Robyn slurred, stifling a yawn and pushing Joanna’s book out of her line of sight as she brought up the app again.

“You can sleep when you’re dead,” Joanna informed her flatly.

“Oh, that’s good,” Fiona piped up from across the room. “Because I’m going to starve to death any minute now. _Ow!”_

“Hands off my garlic!” May, when Robyn glanced over at the kitchen, took another swipe at Fiona’s fingers with a wooden spoon. Fiona dodged. “There were _three_ bulbs! I know you have the other one, Fiona!”

Fiona stuck out her tongue. “Can’t prove it.”

“Give her the garlic back,” Robyn said calmly, settling back against Joanna’s leg and pulling up the mission board. Search and destroy, nothing new. They covered most of those listings by rote anyway. She made a note about the Centinel nest outside the northwest quadrant, but that wasn’t really their usual focus, not unless they started moving toward the city…

“You know,” said Fiona, perched on a bar stool in the kitchen as a long-suffering May carefully stirred garlic into a carrot-and-onion saute. “Some sensitive and considerate people might look at their favorite teammate, whom they love—”

“You,” said May, rapping her on the head with the spoon and ignoring Fiona’s protests about canola oil getting in her hair, “Are _not_ my favorite teammate.” 

“I’m just saying _some_ people use ground beef, because they have _tact.”_

May actually looked horrified. “You don’t use beef in _shepherd’s_ pie, that’s an abomination and you’re a menace. And you hate red meat.”

“Robyn,” Fiona complained. “I’m being oppressed by the Atlas elite—”

“I am going to bake _you_ into a pie if you don’t quit _heckling_ —stand still and let me hit you like a Huntress!” 

“Your vegetables are burning,” said Robyn without looking up. May swore and leapt to add her minced lamb to the pan.

“Besides,” added Joanna. “That’s ground meat from an independent butcher in perimeter Mantle, there’s probably no real lamb in it anyway.”

There was a pause.

“Hmm,” said Fiona. “That’s actually worse. Thanks!”

As Joanna became the new target of May’s ire, Robyn bit back an indulgent smile. She scrolled through the Bounty section with barely a glance and forced herself to wake up as she slowed down to carefully examine the listings under Perimeter Defense. They were almost due for renovations on large sections of the wall; but until those funds and resources were cleared by the Council next year, they’d need to be especially vigilant. As of right now, though, there was nothing to catch her attention. She’d put her girls in for the wall patrol if nothing else came up; that was usually how this went, but just in case…

It was only her own professionalism that made her sit down and go through the escort missions. Nine times out of ten, those were worthless hired guns keeping riots at bay or acting as bodyguards for some wealthy asshole, and Robyn checked them despite the way her blood boiled because knowing what their enemies were up to could make all the difference. Very occasionally, there was a worthy cause; Robyn had taken a fair few commitments to keep an eye on school groups or activist rallies, but…

For several electrified seconds, May and Fiona’s laughter and bickering faded into a white, ringing blur.

She felt Joanna stiffen beneath her. “Robyn? What’s wrong?”

Robyn held her scroll up so that Joanna could read the listing.

“...Oh hell,” Joanna said. “That’s gonna be some bullshit.”

Robyn hummed in agreement, mind whirling as she read through the mission again. _Shipment of electronics to SDC mine D-37. Mission Leader: Angara, Ashe. Two Huntsmen to accompany mission leader in defending truck convoy en route and overseeing installation of security equipment within mine. Time Limit: 72 Hours._

It was the kind of disgustingly transparent mission Robyn wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole, not if you offered her the world on a silver platter. Hired goons for the SDC, thugs to keep the miners in line while the company ground their rights into Dust and Atlas let them.

She hadn’t missed the mission leader, either. Ashe Angara didn’t belong within ten miles of Mantle, let alone in a position of direct power over mine workers…

But both of those mission slots were still open, or had been twenty minutes ago. And whoever filled them would have unfettered access to an SDC mine in one of the most infamously poverty-stricken, poorly-regulated sectors of Mantle. Escort missions like this one were never on the board for more than a few hours, not at SDC pay rates, not in the dead of winter.

“...not gonna get the filling ready before the potatoes are done at this rate, give me the _salt,_ you little demon!”

“Right! What filling is that again? You monster?”

“You know what? Measure me out half a cup of peas and I will give you the rest of this carrot to shut you up.”

“Fiona,” Robyn called, not taking her eyes off her scroll. “Could you come here, please?”

* * *

There were two trucks waiting in the depot.

Space in Mantle and Atlas was always at a premium; but cities needed warehouse districts, even if they had to squeeze a few neighborhoods out of existence to build them. Fiona, ears folding as she followed Robyn up to the electronic gate, half expected it not to open. SDC warehouse complexes usually didn’t, for people like them.

Robyn didn’t seem concerned in the slightest, of course. Fiona knew her well enough to think she was probably a lot more tense than she appeared; but she strolled up to the gate and flashed her license against the reader with a casual wave of the hand, and it clicked over to green and slid open without any issue.

Fiona glanced up at the razor wire topping the perimeter fence as she hopped over the boundary line. 

This early in the morning, this far into hard winter, it was pitch black. Mantle didn’t get much sun even in perfect midsummer weather; if they were lucky they might get a tiny hint of sunlight over the horizon before noon, but that was a big ‘if’. The point was, the whole warehouse complex bristled with harsh white floodlights, and Fiona fought not to openly wince as they approached the trucks.

Look, it wasn’t the humans’ fault that they couldn’t see in the dark, but surely nobody needed _this_ much light?

Of course, Fiona thought when she saw who was waiting cross-armed for them beneath the spotlights, there were some things she’d rather not see.

“Oh, look,” said Ashe as they came within earshot. “The _Hero of Mantle_ finally graces us with her presence.” She sounded as happy to see them as ever. Less, actually; clearly something had her in a bad mood already, because there was a naked saber edge in her voice as well as slung at her hip.

Robyn spread her arms with an easy smile. “And with ten minutes to spare! I assume you have the full mission details for us.”

Cold glare not flickering in the slightest, Ashe held out a hard-light pad.

The tip of her elegant long-furred tail twitched, and Fiona’s eyes snapped to the movement.

Oh, Ashe was _really_ unhappy. She hated those kinds of feline, faunus tells. Too animal-like, or something. She was all about self-control; Fiona’s expressive ears had been a constant source of vague disdain.

Fiona made sure to tilt her ears a little more than usual as she went back to looking around.

She was making mental notes about the warehouse layout, checking for guard towers, that kind of thing. They’d never actually gotten access to an SDC warehouse complex before, and Robyn was too cautious to try sneaking in just to spy; everyone had heard the stories. Not everyone who got caught trespassing on SDC property came back. Pure recon missions were high risk, low reward, and Robyn wouldn’t throw lives away like that.

Not much to see, if Fiona was honest with herself. A lot of grey rock, a lot of bare concrete, bars on the few small windows, cameras everywhere. Locks on everything, fancy electronic ones that logged the ID of anyone who touched them. Forklifts and some big cranes were operating on the other side of an airlock corridor of more chain-link razor-topped fence; they were only in an outer courtyard. She couldn’t see most of the workers, but she knew there were hundreds back there even at this hour.

Pretty miserable. So, about what she’d expected.

“It’s been a while, Ashe.” Robyn casually held out the mission briefing pad for Fiona to take and glance over. She’d _expected_ something horrific, so she was just able to keep her lip from curling with disgust as she realized what the job was. Silently, she gave the pad back, and Robyn handed it back to Ashe. “Surprised to see you all the way down here.”

“Surprised to see you here at all, Hill. I thought you were too good for this kind of work,” was the deceptively mild response. It wasn’t a very good deception, honestly. Ashe was too openly suspicious. She’d either become a worse actress since the Academy, thought Fiona, or she just wasn’t bothering anymore.

“Gotta pay the bills somehow,” said Robyn with a cheerful shrug. “Besides, it caught my interest. This job must be more important than it looks if they put _you_ on it. The Atlas military doesn’t normally lend anyone important to the SDC for the day.”

Ashe’s tail twitched again, and it took all of Fiona’s field discipline to keep a smirk off her face. 

“Should we get going, then?” Robyn was all gracious consideration, and Fiona’s urge to grin needed to be forced down again. “I think it’s about time, but this is your party.”

To Fiona’s surprise, Ashe stiffened with fury before carefully relaxing. With a flickering glance toward the nearby truck drivers and armed guards, she stepped just close enough that she could lower her voice and keep from being easily overheard. At least by the rest of the convoy—who, funnily enough, all seemed to be human. 

“Yes,” she said. “It _is._ I don’t know what you’re playing at, Hill, but this isn’t the Academy.”

“I’m not sure what you’re implying, Ashe. I’m certainly not petty or unprofessional enough to hold grudges from the Academy days. We’re all on the same side, after all.”

Ashe’s eyes darted between them, the first time she’d actually looked at Fiona since they arrived; but despite how tense she was, she clearly couldn’t find anything to object to in Robyn’s statement.

“Fine,” she ground out. “You’re ranged, take the first truck and I’ll take the rearguard.”

“That works,” Robyn said agreeably. “Fiona can spot me.”

Ashe actually laughed at that, though it was a short, bitter sound that was almost alarming. “Fiona can do a lot more than that. We’ll meet you at the mine entrance.”

Weird, thought Fiona, ear twitching toward Robyn as she once more did not smirk in Ashe’s face. It was almost like she didn’t trust them alone together in a military transport stuffed with millions of lien worth of high-grade surveillance equipment.

“See you there.” Robyn’s tone gave no indication that Ashe had said anything either funny or insulting. She brushed two fingers against Fiona’s shoulder to draw her attention; to her surprise, Robyn ducked down to press a quick, chaste kiss to her lips. Drawing back just enough to let Fiona make eye contact and not nearly enough for propriety, she ran a thumb along her jawline and murmured, “Stay safe, lambchop.”

Fiona tried to control her shock as Robyn swung casually up into the cab of the lead truck. That wasn’t—normal, not in the field, not while they were _working._ Definitely not in front of—

Oh, of course. 

Fiona turned to Ashe—whose eyebrows had vanished into her hairline—and finally allowed herself the shit-eating grin she deserved. “Lead the way, boss.”

* * *

This car ride was really fucking awkward.

On the bright side, and Fiona was barely able to contain her delight over it—the awkwardness looked like it was a _lot_ worse for Ashe. _Fiona_ had nothing to be ashamed of.

Since they obviously weren’t talking any time soon, Fiona took stock of the crates of surveillance equipment. There was just no good that could possibly come of this. In theory, they’d wanted better accountability and record-keeping in the mines for years; but they’d wanted it to be government-mandated and secure, with the main purpose of stopping workplace abuse! The SDC installing private surveillance systems for its own internal use was...the opposite of that, actually. 

There’d be nothing to stop them from destroying any records that made them look bad. They wouldn’t be obligated to let anyone else see them. Well, they could be ordered to by a court, but they could always then just claim the records had already been destroyed...no, there were no upsides to this. It was just another way to instill fear.

And then they’d act surprised at how many Grimm attacks there were in the mines.

They were just making their third switchback turn down into the crater when Ashe finally couldn’t take the loaded silence anymore. “So. Still following Hill around, I see.”

Fiona smiled softly without turning towards Ashe. “Always.”

“Does she ever let you talk?”

“She’s my leader in the field,” Fiona answered calmly. “If there’s something I need to tell her, I will. When we’re working I trust her judgement and she trusts me to follow her lead.”

A quiet snort. “Very professional. Would’ve been nice to have gotten some of that in the Academy.”

“Yeah.” Fiona surprised herself with how little heat there was in her own voice. “It would have.”

Ashe sent her a wary look. Something about this conversation apparently wasn’t going the way she’d expected, and Fiona—still reading the label on a closed-circuit video camera bubble—felt a surge of vicious satisfaction. Of course this conversation wasn’t going the way Ashe wanted, but she’d said it herself, hadn’t she? This wasn’t the Academy anymore, and Fiona was no longer the unwanted fourth teammate in a group of Atlas elites. Ashe Angara had never expected her to be happy.

“Nice hat,” Fiona added as a friendly aside. “You look good, it suits you.”

Eyes flashing, Ashe’s head snapped around.

There was absolutely nothing embarrassing or shameful about the uniform Ashe was wearing. It was a perfectly respectable Military Huntress uniform, the standard officer’s commission offered to every graduate of the Academy. But it was definitely the standard commission. Certainly none of the scarlet accents of an AceOp; but more to the point, there was none of the custom, personalized field outfitting that came with the coveted Special Operative title. Specialists were pulled only from the top ten percent of graduating Atlas Academy students—and Ashe Angara had been just a few percentage points off.

Fiona _had_ been offered the SpecOps commission, as had May and every member of Robyn’s Academy team. Only Elm and Clover had accepted it, and both of them were in the AceOps now—it was pretty obvious where Robyn would be today if she’d taken Ironwood’s offer. And Robyn, as Ashe had delighted in pointing out in the Academy, never went anywhere without Fiona.

Ashe had burned about a million bridges chasing that specialist commission, only to have Fiona turn it down without a second thought. And now here they were, and her rage at the reminder was...less satisfying than it might have been.

For the rest of the ride down the crater, Ashe _seethed._

Finally, with a hiss of air brakes and a rough jolt, the truck stopped at the entrance. Fiona bounced to her feet and went to jump to the ground, but Ashe stepped in front of her.

“I don’t know what your game is,” she said, shoulders tense, voice tight. “I don’t know whose idea this was or what the hell you people get out of it. But I am _not_ going to lie down and let you sabotage this for me. Sour grapes, much?”

For a moment Fiona frowned, head tilted slightly—and then she understood.

Ashe hadn’t gotten the command rank she wanted. That had probably never been an option— Ironwood wasn’t actually stupid. For all that Fiona had suffered in Team APCT, by the time they graduated it had been clear to even the most willfully ignorant professors that _she_ was not the problem in their team structure. Ashe’s willingness to scapegoat—ha, ha, ha—and throw a member of her own team under the bus out of personal dislike couldn’t have looked good on her records.

But people grew and changed, and they’d only been students at the time. And that had been years ago. Ironwood _wasn’t_ stupid, and refusing to give second chances based on poor performance in school was no way to run a military.

Ashe had been specifically assigned this job as a mission leader, and given authority over a single pair of Huntresses in the mission’s very design. Robyn and Fiona had accidentally crashed her second chance at a command evaluation.

“This isn’t about you, Ashe,” Fiona said more softly than she’d ever intended to speak to Ashe Angara. “I’ve got no regrets. I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.”

“You’re _here,_ aren’t you?” muttered Ashe, and dropped down to the muddy road.

* * *

Mine workers were used to functioning in shifts; they ran their protests just as efficiently.

The protesters had been cordoned off to the side; Robyn, standing in frozen mud and taking in the scene, took a deep breath. She would talk to them later, she reminded herself. First things first. First things first. Ashe was clearing their presence with the site supervisor; in a few minutes they’d finally have access to the interior of the mine, and that was the most important thing right now.

Her tail prickled, fur standing on end as some part of her braced for a threat that wasn’t coming.

“Robyn?”

Fiona’s soft touch at her elbow still made Robyn jump. Settling her suddenly pounding heart, she glanced down and managed a smile.

“Been a while,” she said simply, ignoring the pain from a tail that wasn’t there. Fiona’s eyes were still wide and concerned, but she nodded and took a step back.

First things first.

Robyn turned with a cheerful grin as Ashe approached—Ashe somehow looked even angrier than before. Good. She was probably driving herself up the wall trying to figure out how they were planning to steal these transports. Ashe had never been good at seeing past her first impressions.

“All good?” she asked brightly. Judging by the look on Fiona’s face, a little _too_ brightly and possibly bordering on manic. Robyn toned it down a few degrees as she continued, “So! I’ve never done this before. What next?”

“We get these crates delivered. We coordinate with security while they’re installed. And that’s _it,_ Hill. You won’t exceed that mandate, you understand?”

Behind her back, Fiona fixed Ashe with a detached, calculating look. Robyn, on the other hand, gave her most innocent smile. “Oversee installation of the equipment and ensure security. I can do that.”

Ashe’s eyes narrowed. Unable to actually find anything Robyn had said wrong, she moved off to start directing the trucks forward. Once she was out of earshot, Robyn turned to Fiona and grinned. 

“You know, lambchop, three huntresses to guard one shipment? Feels like overkill to me.”

Fiona returned the grin. “Funny, I was actually thinking the same thing. Surely the SDC can manage that all on their own?”

“In fact, I’d almost say investigation was _implied_ in our mandate, wouldn’t you agree? We want to make sure all this equipment is installed _to code,_ right?”

“Of course!” Fiona bounced on the balls of her feet. “I’d hate for our negligence to result in anyone accidentally breaking regulations.” 

The gate ahead opened and Ashe started making her way back. Robyn crossed her arms, looking over the mine with predatory anticipation. “Exactly. They might get in _trouble_.”

* * *

They got in trouble.

They got in _so much_ trouble.

Ashe had been so preoccupied with the shipment itself that she hadn’t seen Robyn’s real goal until it was too late. If they stopped this shipment, the SDC would simply buy another. Instead, they’d gotten unfettered access to an operating Dust mine that had been expecting nothing but a trio of hired guns sent by the government to prop up a Schnee enterprise. Under normal circumstances they’d never let Robyn Hill within a hundred yards of this place, but Ashe may as well have rolled out a red carpet.

A few months earlier Fiona had seen a terrier let loose in a rat-infested food warehouse. The mingling of sheer unbridled joy and bloodlust was...basically what it was like watching Robyn work, actually.

They’d gotten here just before daybreak. Three hours and a little charisma, bluster, and sheer audacity later, Robyn had effectively run roughshod over any mine official in her way and turned their simple escort mission into a full-blown safety inspection. It was amazing what you could get done with confidence and military authorization.

Oh, Ashe tried to protest. But there was one of her and two of them, and stopping Robyn once she got going was like...well. Fiona could think of a couple inappropriate metaphors.

“The mission,” Ashe snapped for the seven millionth time, “is to get this done _quickly and efficiently—”_

“You know what’s inefficient?” Robyn crowed. “Look at these timecards! Sir! Sir, is this you? This is an accurate timecard? Really! So you were here last night? Wow. That’s less than twelve hours ago. And according to Atlas regulations—”

 _“Why_ do you have those on your scroll?” demanded Ashe.

“—mine workers can't have both a night and early morning shift unless there's twelve hours between the end of one shift and the beginning of the next!”

“Uh,” the man glanced between the three of them, seeming taken a little aback by Robyn’s sheer energy. “I told my supervisor that, but he said I’d get fired if I pressed it.”  
  
Robyn couldn’t actually be surprised, but she feigned shock anyway. “Wow, that’s a clear-cut case of retaliation if I’ve ever heard one. Can you take my hand and say that again? My semblance can detect falsehood, so if we can get that on the record then I’ll be sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again.”

Ashe tried to step between them, but Fiona casually blocked her path. The mine worker still looked slightly confused, but after a moment of hesitation he took Robyn’s hand and repeated what had happened. Fiona could all but hear Ashe’s teeth grind as the corridor lit up green.

“I’ll make sure that’s reported as soon as possible, sir,” Robyn said gravely. “You have the right to be protected from that kind of hostile work environment. Have there been any other incidents? Do you feel at all degraded or oppressed?”

“Uh…maybe a little...”

Robyn slung an arm around his shoulder. The poor man still seemed a bit shellshocked; other workers in the area, however, were starting to exchange knowing looks. A few wearing union badges had started to smirk, and many more were openly standing around grinning.

“Working off instructions from my supervisor,” Robyn said smoothly to no one in particular, “I _coordinated with mine security_ and got the installation map for these cameras. You know, I’ve done some line-of-sight calculations, and it’s weird how much of this large mining equipment is just outside the range of the cameras? I wonder what that might be about. I’m sure it was an oversight and not at all related to all the safety protocol violations…oh, look. There’s another catwalk with rusted-out handrails. Take a shot, Fiona.”

Over Ashe’s continued protests, Fiona obediently pulled out her scroll and documented the railing.

“So that’s _another_ five million lien for repeat violations,” Robyn concluded. 

“Are you having fun?” snapped Ashe.

Robyn turned back to her, and Fiona’s heart skipped a beat. All of a sudden, Robyn’s vulpine grin was gone; there was something dark and fierce in her eyes, almost haunted.

“I’m not,” she said, deathly serious for the first time. “I’m really, really not, Ashe. Seventy-four fatalities in the past eighteen months in this mine alone. I’m not having fun.”

Ashe was visibly chewing her tongue; but she held it, this time.

In the end, all of her attempts to pull rank and threats that nothing in Robyn’s report would ever be submitted came to nothing. Too much hell had been raised; someone with foresight, one of the workers or the protesters outside or some of both, had contacted Mantle Daily. By the time Robyn and Fiona hiked out of the mine in the late afternoon there was no longer any containing the D-37 bust. The mine with the most infamous fatality rates in Mantle city limits had been turned inside out, and then beaten like a piñata to the tune of billions of lien in fines.

There was a cherry on top, even—other than the relief and righteous vindication on the faces of the miners they passed on their way out.

“Miss Hill!” a reporter called the moment they stepped over the threshold. “Clearly, the mine administration had no warning about this inspection; how did you pull that off? Has this operation been in the works for a while, does this mean Atlas is coordinating with local Huntsmen—Huntresses, forgive me—to enforce regulations?”

Fiona grinned and looked up, waiting for this week’s calmly incendiary speech. To her surprise, Robyn just gave a demure smile.

“Please,” she chided gently. “This was a team effort. But of course this operation has highlighted the coverups and the level of corruption and negligence in our current enforcement protocols. Can Atlas ignore that now? Surely we can all expect better than that. If you’ll excuse me…no, really. No interviews, you really should speak with the mission leader here.”

Fiona laughed and ducked hastily away from the microphones, hoping they hadn’t picked up on it.

All of that, and now Ashe was left holding the bag. Robyn was right, after all; on paper, this was Ashe Angara’s mission through and through.

All of a sudden the dark midwinter afternoon felt warm.

“Miss Angara? Miss Angara, if I could just get a quick statement—”

* * *

The cold had _teeth,_ this deep in winter.

It tore through any layers you could wrap yourself in, bit deep into your bones and held on there. A slight breeze was enough to savage even a trained Aura, and any dampness would tear you apart from the inside. Smoke hung in the air along with the sickly sweet fumes of garbage and spent engine Dust from transports.

But the sunsets from Mantle were like nothing else on Remnant.

Fiona nuzzled into her side, boots kicking idly off the city wall as they watched a blaze of fire turn the darkened tundra a thousand colors, glinting off the ice.

“Do you think she’ll take it?” she asked, voice soft.

Robyn put an arm around her.

Yes, they’d played a trick on Ashe Angara. She’d chosen her side time and time again, and Robyn’s girls had chosen theirs. But for all that...Robyn pitied her, sometimes. Fiona pitied her even more, and Fiona was the one with every right to want her to suffer. 

So they’d given her a gift, as well—if she was smart and honest enough to take it.

Robyn wondered whether Fiona had also figured out what a solo command mission like this might mean for Ashe Angara, who had failed so spectacularly at her first chance to prove she could lead a squadron. She probably had. Either way, Robyn had just given her lead credit for the biggest single mine safety bust in living memory—the kind of thing that any Huntress worth her salt could build a career out of. All she had to do was take credit for it.

If she owned this inspection—yes, there was some brief political inconvenience. But the SDC was not the Atlas military, and the Atlas military couldn’t exactly turn around now and say that she _shouldn’t_ have followed the law and enforced their own regulations. All she had to do was take credit, and she would have a name and a reputation. A _good_ reputation, one of being competent and scrupulous and holding powerful people to the grindstone. Doors opened themselves to someone who could pull that off and was looking to advance.

Or she could reject it. Continue protesting that she had nothing to do with the fiasco and had tried to stop it, but that obnoxious busybody Robyn Hill had walked all over her. That she’d been completely unable to control her own team on what was meant to be a milk run.

Robyn thought about it, and finally gave Fiona a light squeeze.

“You know her better than I do,” she admitted. “If she does take it, it’ll be out of self-preservation, but that might be enough.”

Fiona looked up, ears pricked, curious. “Enough to do what?”

Of course Fiona wouldn’t grasp the idea, Robyn thought fondly. She brushed a stray lock of messy white hair out of Fiona’s face, then turned back to watch the sunset.

“It’ll give her a taste of what it’s like to have honor,” she said after a moment. “It’s not real, but she might just find she likes it. Being a Huntress.”

Fiona nodded slowly, cuddled into Robyn’s shoulder. “I think…I think she deserves a second chance. She didn’t have what I had.” A hard swallow, and Robyn’s grip tightened reflexively. “She didn’t have _you.”_

“Thanks, Fiona,” Robyn whispered.

“She won’t take it, though.” Fiona plucked at a stray thread on her knee. “I don’t think she’ll believe that people would respect her.” She hesitated and looked up again. “Is it weird that that makes me sad?”

Robyn leaned down to press their foreheads together. After a long pause, she said, “It’s not weird. She doesn’t deserve it, but it’s not weird.”

“Okay.”

The sun had barely been there to begin with; now, finally, the last brilliant edge of it slipped under the horizon. Neither of them hurried to move. 

Finally, however, it started to rain, and that was too much to deal with even inside the heating grid. Robyn shifted, and reached over to ruffle Fiona’s hair.

“Let’s go,” she said, getting to her feet on the extreme edge of the wall. “We just got paid, and May’s making butter cookies for you but we’re on our own for dinner.”

Fiona brightened. “May’s making cookies?”

“Dinner first.” Fiona let her ears droop dramatically, and Robyn couldn’t help but laugh. “Come on, lambchop. I’ll buy you a curry.”

**Author's Note:**

> We were so, so close to titling this fic "They Don't Even Have Dental" but we felt it didn't strike the right emotional tone.


End file.
